Cleveland Pipeline

by Don Pendleton

  She said, “Well, I see your point. I wish I could applaud it. Oh hell. The truce is ending, isn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily. I don’t want applause. I simply want cooperation. How did you tie in your list with Pine Grove?”

  She sighed, wriggled, scratched her chin, then told him, “Well, the rat tried to get me killed, anyway. Another name was penciled at the top of that sheet of paper. Mel Sorenson. He’s the manager at Pine Grove. It was no feat at all to track that.”

  Bolan told her, “I spoke to Sorenson a few hours ago. Please note that I did not execute him. No need to. That guy wrote his own script when he threw in with the likes of Tony Morello. If it will ease your wounded ego, and just for the record, Sorenson did not think that Morello would hit you. Was Judge Daly on your list?”

  “Yes. I tried to warn him. That’s how I got undone.”

  “Where’d you get that list, Susan?”

  “Sorry, that definitely is privileged info.”

  “Okay. I’ll respect that. For now. What did you think the list represented? What did it mean—to you?”

  She flipped a hand in the air. “It blew my mind. It suggested so many things. But of course there were logical, rational explanations too. I mean, you know, harmless ones. They were all members of the country club. The list could have been prepared for any number of reasons. Special treatment, maybe. Naturally, in that view, there was nothing particularly ominous in the fact that expired members had been deleted. But I sure smelled a story. I had to check it out.”

  “So you went to work at the club.”

  “Yes. Twice I got called on the carpet for my curiosity. I didn’t really learn anything. In fact, I was just about to shelve the whole thing. Then I overheard Sorenson in a conversation with Tony Morello. Hey, I’m not naive, I knew who Tony Morello was. I worked the police beat in this town for about six months. From the drift of the conversation, I got it that Sorenson simply must deliver Edwin Daly to that nefarious floating whorehouse—that night, or else.”

  “You knew about the Christina, huh?”

  “That sort of thing does get out, doesn’t it?” she replied. “Everybody in Cleveland, it seems, knows about the Christina.”

  Bolan asked her, “So what is your reading of that list of names now?”

  She lifted a knee and tenderly inspected it. “Sounds like blackmail, doesn’t it?”

  He asked, “To what end?”

  “I thought blackmail was an end in itself.”

  “Not always,” Bolan said. “Very often it’s simply a means to a much larger end. It’s standard procedure for the Mob. If you need them, buy them. If you can’t buy them, terrorize them. If they’re too large to terrorize, eat them.”

  “And what if you can’t eat them?” she asked softly.

  “Then you remove them. And hope for better luck with their successors.”

  She said, very faintly, “Oh.”

  “Somebody has a very ambitious program in mind for this area.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Tony Morello, I told you.”

  “Tony Morello is a stumblebum. This one is beyond his scope.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” she told him. “But I’d like to tag along and find out. Can I tag along?”

  He said, “I usually try to avoid war correspondents. They give away too many secrets.”

  “You can trust this one. You know me. I’m ethical. I protect my sources.”

  “It is a combat area, you know,” he reminded her. “Things could get very hot. In fact, they will.”

  “I’ve had my baptism,” she reminded him. “And I promise to be a good girl.”

  “I’m in charge,” he warned her. “You do what I say, when I say it. There’s no democracy on a battlefield. I lead, you follow.”

  “Okay. I accept that.”

  And that was how Susan Landry came to be in the Warwagon with Mack Bolan on that very grim morning in Cleveland. He had known from the beginning that it was a mistake, that a woman had no place in his war, that she would be in very grave jeopardy.

  But, then, she already was.

  This way, at least, he could keep an eye on her. And that was becoming a more and more pleasant exercise with each passing moment. Too pleasant, yeah … much too damn pleasant.

  13

  HEART DRAIN

  The Port of Cleveland nestles inside a long breakwater which stretches from Gordon Park south-westward to Edgewater Park, subdivided into East Basin and West Basin. Sharing the protected lake-front are several yacht clubs, a small airport geared for personal and business craft, public areas, and the port terminal.

  Bolan nosed the Warwagon into a public access area and told Susan Landry, “It’s time to go to work.”

  He went to the midships console and fired up the intelligence computer, then plugged in the data he’d acquired during the preceding hours. Next he put through a hookup to the National Data Center in Washington, using radiophone via the Bell System and a confidential access code.

  “What are you doing?” Landry inquired, watching all the activity from behind Bolan’s shoulder.

  “Going to Washington,” he said. “It’s time to identify some wolves.” He produced a plasticized card and scanned the program codes imprinted there. “There we go,” he muttered, more to himself than for the lady’s benefit. “Corporate structures, American and multinational.”

  She said, “I don’t want to believe this.”

  He poked in the program code and asked her, “What’s the problem now?”

  “You actually do have government connections.”

  “No more than anyone else could have,” he told shall all things be revealed unto you. Even to you, her. “All you need is the proper equipment and a will to know.” He turned to smile at her. “And then Peace and Love.”

  “I don’t like it,” she chafed. “You’re telling me that anybody—just anybody—can plug into the private lives of people all over this country?”

  He said, “By George, she’s got it. Hush a minute. Here it comes.”

  An eight-by-ten viewscreen in the onboard computer came alive and began displaying line after line of electronically imprinted information. The speed with which each line appeared and vanished could have been entirely bewildering to the untrained observer; not so to the man at the console. He was totally absorbed in the flow, eyes unblinkingly assimilating the rapidfire display, occasionally grunting with approval at something he saw there.

  A minute or two later, the viewscreen went black. Bolan muttered, “Well I’ll be damned.”

  “I hope it meant something to you,” the girl commented. “It’s all totally lost on me. Don’t you get a printout?”

  “I don’t have space or need for hard copy storage,” he said. “It’s all in the onboard computer now, anyway. I can recall it any time I need it.”

  “You really do have a photographic mind, don’t you?” she murmured. “That’s almost frightening. I’m still hung up on the damned information leak, though. I suppose you could just poke my name in there and get my life story, couldn’t you?”

  He nodded. “Everything that’s been a matter of public record. Give me your Social Security number and I’ll show you.”

  She said, “Thanks but no thanks. So what did you learn this time from your Washington connection?”

  He told her, “I plugged in the list of names from Pine Grove. In a corporate program. You would not believe the creeping tangle of interests there. I’m going to have to think on it some.”

  She said, “I didn’t give you that list.”

  “No. But Sorenson did.”

  “Thanks, pal.”

  “Confidence works both ways, little buddy.”

  “I haven’t withheld anything important,” she protested.

  He smiled. “Neither have I. What do you know about explosives?”

  She blinked. “All I want to know. Nothing.”

  He went aft to the armory and opened a special, safelike box. The gir
l wandered back and asked him, “What are we blowing up?”

  He produced a large package of doughlike substance wrapped in black waxy paper. “They’re scheduled to move the bad Christina at noon. I don’t want them to do that.”

  “Hey!” she cried. “You can’t blow up a ship in dock. It could take the whole port with it!”

  “Right. That’s why I am not going to do it. I could sink her, though, right where she sits. Without disturbing anything around her. I could almost do it to that old tub with a can opener. But then that would litter the port, wouldn’t it? Interfere with shipping. So what can I do, Peace and Love?”

  “Call the Coast Guard,” she muttered.

  “They couldn’t hold her. What’s the violation? Foreign registry severely limits the guard’s jurisdiction. That’s mainly why so many American-owned vessels register with Liberia. They can get away with most anything. So. What do we do?”

  “You’re baiting me,” she said uncomfortably. “You know what you’re going to do.”

  He said, “Yeah,” very solemnly. “I’m going to drop her screw.”

  “Drop what?”

  “The screw—the propellor. The thing that makes her go.”

  “I know what a propellor is,” she said, small voiced. “A ship that size must have an awfully large one. You’re going to blow it off, eh?”

  “Uh-huh.” He was making strips from the doughy package. “Wrap a few pounds of this around the shaft. Add an impact detonator. Soon as the shaft makes a turn, that screw will drop. Part of the shaft, too, if I’m lucky. A kink or two, anyway.”

  “It sounds very risky,” she said worriedly.

  “This stuff is pretty stable,” he assured her.

  “No, I didn’t mean—won’t someone see you?”

  He grinned. “Sure. Invisibility is not one of my talents. The trick is to make them see what I want them to see. And I won’t be able to use scuba gear.”

  “Will that stuff work underwater?”

  “This stuff will work anywhere. Actually it’s used quite a bit for underwater demolition work.”

  “You’re making me nervous,” she said, and went forward.

  Bolan completed his preparations and carefully coiled the strips of plastics into a small metal box. Then he changed clothes—donning Levi’s and sneakers and a blue dungaree jacket, topping off with a black knit navy watchcap. He then placed a Schmeisser autopistol and several clips of spare ammo inside another box and carried the stuff forward.

  Landry was seated at the midships console, staring gloomily at the apparatus.

  “Stay put,” he commanded. “I’ll be gone maybe an hour. Don’t show yourself and please don’t mess with the gear.”

  “And what if I’m not here when you get back?” she asked soberly.

  “I’ll wonder how you got so dumb. And I’ll say a prayer for you.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Susan.”

  “Don’t kiss me.”

  “I hadn’t planned to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re obviously disturbed again.”

  “I’m not disturbed.”

  “Stay put,” he commanded firmly, and departed.

  Later, he would wish that he had kissed her.

  The Christina was bustling with preparations for getting underway. Dockside connections for power and water were being terminated. Last minute supplies were being taken aboard. The bridge was manned and seamen were scurrying about the decks. A couple of cute kids in shorts and halters were watching the activity from an after railing on the boat deck. Bolan scowled at that. A telephone conversation recorded in the Warwagon’s surveillance banks had specifically ordered that “all the girls” be taken ashore. Obviously these two did not fit the classification. Where then did they fit?

  Smoke was pouring from the stack. The tugboat was maneuvering to come alongside. Linehandlers on the main deck of Christina were jawing goodnaturedly with the tug crewmen, heavy Italian accents in abundance.

  Bolan waited until the tug was secured; then he pulled his runabout alongside the tug, tied to, and leapt aboard. The tug’s skipper turned to him with pleasant curiosity.

  “How long before you move?” Bolan inquired.

  “Probably ten minutes,” the guy replied. “What’s up?”

  Bolan made an unhappy face. “I gotta go down and inspect the damn screw.”

  “Well, you better do it damn quick. What? Like that? You got no diving gear?”

  “Just a quick look,” Bolan explained. “It’s not worth all that.”

  The guy was looking him over. “Well, you got plenty of time for a quick look.” He laughed. “Don’t hang on too long. They’ll be turning those screws soon as we clear the dock.”

  Bolan laughed back. “That’s why I checked you first. Don’t do no turning ’til I get outta there.”

  “Wahooo! Bide ’em cowboy!”

  They laughed together and Bolan went back to his boat. He cast off and sent the little craft on toward the overhang of the fantail. Very funny, yeah. The “screw” of a ship this size would have a diameter larger than Bolan’s height.

  He kicked off his shoes and strapped the metal box to his waist, then slipped over the side and into the water. It was cold, yeah. The propellor shaft was submerged by about ten feet. The water was clouded, visibility poor. He spent a minute sizing the job, then surfaced for air. The tugboat skipper was looking his way. He went down again, hooked his legs about the propellor shaft and sat there for stability while working the plastics in. He had to surface twice again before the work was completed. By this time, the guy on the tug was visibly agitated.

  Bolan pulled himself into the boat and returned alongside the tugboat.

  “Find something wrong?” the skipper wondered worriedly.

  Bolan panted, “I thought so at first but naw, it’s okay, I guess. Tell the captain the shaft is getting pitted pretty bad. He’ll be wanting that looked at next time he goes to the yard.”

  The tugboat skipper casually saluted as Bolan pulled away. He heard him relaying the “inspection” results to the bridge of the Christina. The guy up there laughed and said something in Italian.

  Bolan laughed too. Yeah, he laughed inside all the way back to the public pier—wishing he could have hung around until Christina turned her screw.

  The inner laughter ended, however, the moment he entered the Warwagon.

  He’d been gone about forty minutes.

  He wondered how long Landry had been gone.

  There was nothing left of her here save a note pinned to the command chair: “I need to check something out. I memorized your phone number. Contact you later.”

  It was signed “Peace and Love.”

  “I wish you that, kid,” he muttered to the empty gunship.

  Somehow it had never seemed so empty before.

  14

  ASPECTS

  Bolan did not expect Susan Landry to contact him again. She had left because she simply could not stomach what he was, could not come to terms with it—perhaps did not even wish to. So okay. Good for her. He would not wish that she compromise her own deeply felt principles. Not for the sake of a living dead man, for sure.

  But the event of her departure gave the man considerable pause, nevertheless, causing him to call to question once again his own deeply held convictions. Was he in fact as wrong as Susan believed him to be? Did it even matter, anyway, this insane war between an immovable object and an irresistible force? Hadn’t the shit machines simply reassembled themselves everywhere he’d smacked them down? What had he actually bought, in real human terms, with all the bloodletting?

  Suppose she was right. And suppose everything Mack Bolan had committed his life to was but a hollow mockery of what a real life should be. Was Mack Bolan the supreme sucker, in reality a pathetic throwback from some long-vanished age of mankind, like some of the columnists had said?

  Bolan caught his own eye in the rearview mirror and was sta
rtled by what he saw there. Only then did he realize that his eyes were wet.

  Damnation!

  He was sitting there feeling sorry for himself! And for why? Because some zit of a girl, some pompous kid with pedantic principles did not like his innards?

  Well, to hell with that!

  He bade farewell to Susan Landry in his mind and in his heart, savoring the memory of a few hours pleasantly spent, but consigning the differences which had split them to a higher level of understanding. And then he turned that brilliant military mind back to the problems of his war without end.

  He pulled to a clear area to take a reading on the Port of Cleveland. The bad Christina was wallowing near the sea gate, now under tow by two tugs which were assisting her back to her berth. Bolan smiled with grim satisfaction and pulled onto the Lakeland Freeway, running northeasterly. It was high time to jerk a couple of tails and get this Cleveland game on the front burner. The intelligence scan from Washington had raised some disturbing questions, some of which perhaps would never yield to an Executioner-style bust. Questions of corporate hanky-panky aplenty in this “best location in the nation” and which, if answered affirmatively, would make Tony Morello’s goon squads the most underrated gestapo in the whole world.

  It was a far larger game than Bolan had initially suspected. And, yeah, perhaps too large for a lone soldier to tackle effectively. It seemed, though, that he had come upon the game at the best possible time. If the recorded hysterics meant anything, the “corporation” was at a crucial stage of development. Perhaps then a bit of heat, strategically applied, would boil their pot over and the cannibals would end up eating one another. Morello was already showing signs of cracking. A couple of good hard pushes could conceivably produce a domino effect throughout the Cleveland conspiracy.